Saturday, October 15, 2011

Free the cloud...from its data centers - Five types of services

Last week, I was driving to
a meeting in Tel-Aviv. To get directions and inform about possible delays, I entered the address to my GPS service (Waze), by copying it from the appointment. Waze determined a 10 minutes late
arrival, so I text message the expected delay using my blackberry.

How many times have you
done it? Can’t we have a service that will handle it for us, so that we
will not have to drive and text.

Cloud computing opens the opportunity to have a 'virtual representative' dedicated to serve a person or a company in a specific area, coordinating multiple apps located all over. Like in this very simple case that involves three different environments, smart-phone, enterprise environment and the public web.

Let’s use an Octopus as a
metaphor to illustrate the concept of 'head in the
cloud...arms down to earth'.

The Octopus head represents the person or company that is served
by the cloud, and the arms are the enabling fabric that embraces apps and data
inside data centers and outside.

End-to-end consumer representation - Head in the cloud

Most of the pre-cloud solutions are constrained by location, device or environment. Cloud
computing is free of physical limitations and thus can oversee computing and
information assets everywhere, on behalf of individual people
and companies.

As an example, before
Apple's iPod, mobile music solutions were just a device that played music.

Apple took a different approach and shifted the focus from the device to the
consumer. They addressed the consumer needs by building an iTunes store and an ecosystem around it, and then bundled it together with an iPod
device. It fundamentally changed consumer experience and created a new way for
the music industry to participate and monetize.

Apple provided an
end-to-end consumer experience that practically transformed the music industry,
and with the same principles also the mobile industry.

...but Apple like Apple they only support their own devices and environments, which inherently limits their reach.

Cloud as a Fabric - Arms down to earth

Cloud computing essentially
takes the Internet revolution to its next level. So similar to the Internet it
should embrace them all, whether physically, in the cloud, at people’s home or
outside, and on company’s premises. Cloud should be a fabric that seamlessly
streamlines information and apps, in the right context, to the right device, in the right
place, and at the right time.

As a fabric it should be
aware of the metadata managed and not necessarily the data itself.

Dropbox succeeded to break out of the pure Vs. hybrid cloud
debate. They manage files storage, on behalf of individuals and groups, at
virtually any device and environment. While the cloud serves more as the head that
enables the synchronization.Generalizing this concept can address most of the currently forbidden cloud apps including: Data warehouses with large volume and sensitive information, Apps with highly confidential content like banking and mission critical apps. Their metadata and orchestration logic can be kept in the cloud data
centers, and the physical content in one or multiple on-premise instances.Five potential cloud-based services that can 'free' the cloud, in the enterprise spaceHere are five types of services that can use
the same concept.

Computing resource
optimization and utilization –
Overall management is in the cloud, and the arms can be on either company's or person's
premises, or in different selected site and/or a selected cloud data center.
Services can include: (a) Backup services; (b) Balance peak load time; (c) Fail
over services; (d) Share and trade excess computing resources.

Improved usability – Synchronize content across multiple environments and
devices – The 'head' is predicting user's or company's needs in terms of time,
place and device type, and the 'arms' are the actual presence at the device
side. Foursquare's
Radar, as an example, is starting to push relevant information at the right place and time.

Complete end-to-end
solutions – Source content and
apps that reside on-premise and in the cloud, across the value chain and deliver
them effectively to target audience, while opening new collaboration opportunities. Companies like GT Nexus and E2Open are focusing on this space in the
Supply Chain area.

Operation resources – This one goes beyond computing resources - Access
resources that operate everywhere for outsourcing tasks, while orchestrating
them from the cloud similar to the Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Cloud computing is THE
enabler and power behind the 'tectonic
technology shift' (The Big Five - Mobile, Social media, Big Data,
Consumerization of IT, by Dion Hinchcliffe). As a fabric it can expand and embrace
all consumers’ needs without forcing them to physically keep content in the
cloud.

Cloud can modernize Archimedes statement "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth", and be this place that we stand on to transform the
IT world.

Also this blog is based on
many discussions Oren Ryngler and I had. Yes we talk quite a lot…;-)

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About Me

Former Global SVP at SAP. During my tenure with SAP I initiated and led topics in the area of Mobile, Business ByDesign, Business One, Line-of-Business Cloud solutions.
I am now starting my next thing, planning to focus on cloud, mobile, analytics and social and the opportunities they open for business.